Patrick Henry or Gideon?

Patrick Henry's famous quote:

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Gideon's famous quote:

"For it is better that we should be in bondage than that we should lose our lives; therefore, let us put a stop to the shedding of so much blood."

Where do you come down?

The perils of scripture and politics

Read this and tell me what you think it means:

4 And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.

5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.

6 Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land;

7 And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.

[D&C 98:4-7]


Do you think that

a.) This means the Lord supports the U.S. Constitution as the only law of the land, and that anything more or less than the Constitution "cometh of evil", or

b.) This means the Lord supports his followers in upholding the law, and that he generally approves of the Constitution (but doesn't explicitly rule out other forms of government) because it allows his followers the freedom to follow Him, or

c.) None of the above?

Operators are standing by...

A Scriptural Basis For Mormon Environmentalism

As a Mormon and an environmentalist I believe that ensuring healthy air, water, and ecosystems is our moral and religious duty.  My own Mormon environmentalism is based on three important principles found in the scriptures.

First, all of creation is imbued with a soul, and thus has value.  We are taught that all things, both animate and inanimate, were created “spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth” (Moses 3:5), therefore they all have a “living soul” (Moses 3:9), and the “worth of souls is great in the sight of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10).  We are even taught that our mother earth herself has a soul and is conscious of our “filthiness”  (Moses 7:48).

Pro-Death Bona Fides

In a strange twist, Republican candidates now must seemingly prove their pro-death bona fides to the Tea Party extremist base.  In the last two Republican debates the crowd has made it clear that death is preferable to life, eye-for-an-eye-tooth-for-a-tooth is preferable to love thy neighbor and blessed-are-the-peacemakers and good-samaritanism and so forth.  (Videos below)

Social Justice in Book of Mormon-Era Governments

I recently came across the following verse in the Book of Mormon, Helaman 6:39:

And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God.

At this time in the history of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites are righteous and the Nephites are not, so much so that the Nephites have allowed the Gadianton robbers to take control of the government.  Upon taking control the Gadianton folks immediately started harassing and making life miserable for the poor.

 

There are various ways to interpret this verse, we don't really know for sure exactly what was going on, but it struck me that this verse may be evidence of social justice in Book of Mormon-era government.  The assumption of the verse seems to me to be that previous to the robbers taking over the government, the government was in the business, to some unknown degree, of helping the poor.  Following the take-over the policy is reversed and the robbers used the government as described.  Why else would the author describe of the oppression of the poor and meek in the same sentence he states that the Gadianton's took over the government if not to draw that contrast?

Down With the Two-Party System

. . . kind of.

As it stands now, there are two major political parties that are supposed to somehow represent the infinitely more complex political views of hundreds of millions of Americans.  It's a political duopoly.  Our two political parties, meanwhile, are failing us spectacularly.

Not only are the two parties failing us, but the two-party system itself, regardless of which parties are in control, is failing us.  It is a system which actively suppresses diverse ideas and candidates and thinking-outside-the-box, which results is less choice and less democratic representation for Americans.

The 2000 presidential election is an apt illustration of this problem.  More people voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush, but Bush became president of the United States.  So you have a situation where the president of the United States did not garner a majority vote of Americans.  This might be attributed to two major factors.  First, the electoral college and, second, the presence of Ralph Nader.

Huntsman the Environmentalist

I think Jon Huntsman might be campaigning for my specific vote.  I'm not sure he even cares if he becomes president, as long as I vote for him.  Because, really, I can't see who his constituency might otherwise be.

Huntsman recently had dinner with a bunch of environmentalists and declared that "conservation is conservative."  Add this to a list of other moderate-to-liberal stances, and I'm not sure Huntsman has a firm grasp on today's Republican Party.  This is not a party of moderation, generally, and certainly not a party hospitable to even inklings of environmentalism.

I've already expressed a little political crush on him, so if he keeps reaching out to me personally like this I'm in trouble because my steamy new political partner is the Green Party and I don't want them getting jealous.  But a moderate Mormon environmentalist as President of the United States?  That's hot.

Two More Debt Ceiling Facepalms

1.  If one didn't know any better, one might conclude that our elected officials don't care whatsoever about the American people.  I know it may sound shocking, but I have this sneaking suspicion.  As evidence, I give you this Washington Post-ABC poll which asked people, among other things, if they would oppose or support certain items in an effort to reduce the national debt.  Here's a summary:

Cut spending on Medicaid:  26% support, 72% oppose

Cut military spending:  43% support, 56% oppose

Raising taxes on Americans earning over $250,000 a year:  72% support, 27% oppose

Gradually raising Medicare age from 65 to 67:  46% support, 54% oppose

Changing the way SS benefits are calculated so they increase slower:  42% support, 53% oppose

Raising taxes on oil and gas companies:  59% support, 39% oppose

Means testing Medicare:  61% support, 36% oppose

Removing SS tax income cap currently at $107,000:  66% support, 33% oppose

Raising taxes on hedge fund managers (essentially changing capital gains taxes to income taxes):  64% support, 25% oppose

The Debt Ceiling Drama Makes Everyone Look Incompetent

The debt ceiling stuff makes me sick to my stomach.  Despite the fact that the warnings about default are clear and dire, our elected leaders seem to be only interested in political showmanship and not actually solving the problem.

On the one hand you have the Republicans who are the party much more responsible for our unwieldy debt, refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless all of their suddenly austere measures are met without any inkling of desire to compromise on any issue.  They are the major cause of the problem, are completely hypocritical about government debt and size now that they believe it is politically advantageous, and are unwilling to negotiate like responsible adults to avoid the catastrophe they precipitated.  They are more interested, it seems, in pleasing their corporate overlords than doing what is right for the American people.  Here is one graph, among many many many, that illustrates the level to which Republicans are at fault for the debt:

Good News Everyone: Corporations Are Doing Great

The economic recovery isn't going so well for Americans.  The unemployment rate is still over nine percent and hiring is actually slowing down again.  Home foreclosures are still occurring at an alarmingly high rate.  Regular people are not doing well.  In short, as the Wall Street Journal notes: "Across a wide range of measures—employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being—the economy's improvement since the recession's end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II."

In contrast--stark, ugly contrast--corporations are doing great.  Corporate profits are at an all-time high.  Corporations are holding onto a record amount of cash, around $2 trillion.  The GDP is higher now than it was pre-recession, but virtually all increased income was captured as profits by corporations.  Stocks are the highest they've been since the recession began.  Taxes on the wealthiest Americans are at all-time lows.  The Wall Street Journal astutely noted that there is a "dichotomy between corporate performance and the overall health of the economy."

Mormon and Green

It seems to me that every instinct that the current American political class has is wrong.  The economy is faltering badly after banks and insurance firms drove it to disaster with too many risks and bad investments?  Let's deregulate, cut programs to the poor and those most vulnerable, and lower taxes on the rich.  The western forests are unhealthy and in bad shape because of decades of mismanagement?  Let's manage them with an even heavier hand.  The debt ceiling is about to be reached, and default by the government could have dire consequences for an already weak economy?  Let's play political games with it.  Climate change problem?  Scientists are communists.  No one seems to have the gumption or desire to stand up for something better.

As I looked over and contemplated my glib list of problems, politically, with America, it became glaringly clear that the Democrats and Republicans don't have the solutions.  They are too entrenched and powerful to come up with big, new ideas to fix big, new problems.  I've known this for quite a while, of course, on some level I think we all do, but the idea is continually sharpening in my mind.  As a Mormon with the political convictions that I have, I feel more and more compelled to cast my lot with the Green Party.

What's Wrong With Us? Some ideas.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, politically, but I made a list of what's wrong with America right now.  Enjoy:

1. Pointless, horrible wars that we won't end.
2. An assault on our civil liberties, mostly due to the Patriot Act.
3. A complete lack of initiative and desire to do something about climate change and out-of-control consumption of fossil fuels.
4. The deterioration of our public school system.
5. The ever-growing income disparity chasm between the rich and poor.
6. A broken health care system and no universal health care on the horizon to fix it.
7. Underregulated crony corporatism.
8. Insulated, unaccountable politicians.
9. Incivility and bigotry.
10. The New York Yankees.

To sum it up: we have a bipartisan assault on peace, liberty, niceness, the poor, and the environment.  Am I missing anything?

So long Medicaid and thanks for all the CHIPs

As part of the economic recovery/stimulus package of 2009, Congress approved in increase in federal funding levels for Medicaid. Unlike Medicare, which is funded entirely by the federal government, Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal and state governments. The increased levels provided bumped the federal portion of payments up to ~65% of the total burden. It's hard to pinpoint the numbers because it varies from state to state with wealthy states receiving less support and poor states receiving more.

These increased levels drop back down to the pre-stimulus levels at the end of the June forcing states to adjust. The extra aid was originally scheduled to end last December, but Congress extended it for six months after being petitioned by both the White house and state officials. Now that the extra ~10% is ending thanks to political posturing and focus on national debt, individual state's must now find a way to compensate.

One method for California is to cut payments to recipients and physicians. Of course, these beneficiaries took the American way and sued the state to block the cuts. The case made it to the Supreme Court, but the Justices sided with the state. The 10% nibble might just be the beginning with enormous deficits (and incumbents' seats) causing turmoil. The long-term implications from such cuts are much more frightening. More physicians will likely refuse service to medicaid patients, forcing the latter to visit the ER as a sole means of care. By law, an ER can't refuse a patient even if they have no insurance or means to pay. Likely the shift from visiting general practitioners to showing up at the hospital means a couple of things: longer lines in the ER and in increase in hospital premiums to compensate for the costs (losses) associated with an overrun ER.

In addition to, or instead of, reducing Medicaid payments to providers, some states are finding other options. New York is imposing a cap on Medicaid spending. Connecticut is proposing more precise cuts and is only setting limits on vision and dental coverage. The rest of the states are reporting some combination of truncating payments to providers, reducing beneficiaries services while increasing co-payments, and shifting funds from other state-funding programs (like education) to offset the changes.

As a result of political impotence, combined with the alleged public outcry, there is no universal health care, nor is there any legitimate replacement for Medicaid anywhere on the horizon. Like Senator Rockefeller IV said about the beneficiaries, "Seniors vote. But if you are poor or disabled, you might not vote, and if you are a child, you do not vote - that's a lot of Medicaid's population. They don't have money to do lobbying." I'm concerned that this is the beginning of the end for Medicaid. My advice? Don't get born, don't get poor, and don't get old.

That, or you can go rob $1 from a bank to get a better life.

Don't You Make This Difficult For Me, Jon Huntsman

It's early, and my feelings are confused right now, but I think I'm starting to really like Jon Huntsman.  I mean, I liked him a lot when he was governor because we just never had governors like him in Utah.  He supported cap-and-trade legislation, he moved us forward on civil rights by supporting gay rights and civil unions, he supported immigrant rights, he called out those ridiculous congressional Republicans for being useless (his word was "inconsequential"), and he generally talked and acted like a moderate in a state where Republican politicians are almost universally crazies.  I even started to like that weird thing he does with his eyebrows.  He wasn't perfect, but he was pretty good.

Then he praised Obama and Clinton and went to work as the ambassador to China in the Obama administration, even when everyone knew he had national aspirations.

Now it is clear that he's running for president and he continues to talk like a moderate, reasonable conservative and, frankly, it's jarring.  Take a look at this article by the Deseret News and in particular the transcript of the interview he did with CNN's John King.

Liberal States' Rights

My visceral opposition to strong states' rights comes from a variety of sources.  First, I don't like the way my state generally does things.  Utah is a drag.  This is an intellectually shallow argument against states' rights, but its real for many people.

Second, I think the constitutional arguments behind it are pretty weak, or have become weaker in a changing world that the Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen.  I went into detail about this here.

Third, I think there are certain basic privileges and protections that the federal government should ensure that many states are hostile to, such as health care, which we'll discuss more below.  I support the federal government setting minimum standards for health care, the financial sector, etc. that are binding on states and put all Americans on a more equal footing.  As long as we are the United States of America, what's bad for one of us is bad for all of us.

Second Greatest Mormon Baseball Player (Pitcher Division)

Our quest to identify the second greatest Mormon baseball player brings us to the pitchers.  I'm proud to say that this is a pretty good crop.  There seem to be more very good Mormon pitchers than Mormon position players, and if anyone has a theory as to why I'd like to hear it.  But this analysis comes down to five pitchers: Roy Halladay, Jack Morris, Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Hurst, and Vernon Law.

I'll just note here that my search for the second greatest Mormon baseball players is not contingent on church activity or faithfulness.  First, I have no way of knowing and second it's not my place to make those judgment calls anyway.  Eckersley, for instance, is only known to have been active for a few years as a youth and has had some well publicized trials and struggles and as far as I can tell does not identify as a Mormon, but he was baptized and so we consider him.  I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it or not, but I'm a big-tent Mormon kind of guy and so we push on.

This is going to get a little long so let me just dispense with the suspense right now for those that don't want to read the whole thing: Roy Halladay, with even a partially completed career, is the greatest Mormon pitcher of all time and by the time it's all said and done it won't even be close.  There, you know how it ends, now lets enjoy the journey, in alphabetical order.

Second Greatest Mormon Baseball Player (Non-Pitcher Division)

If Harmon Killebrew is the obvious greatest Mormon baseball player of all time, and I think he is, then it behooves us to identify the second greatest Mormon baseball player of all time.  This is a bit of a closer call, so we'll break it down into two posts with this first one focusing on everyday players and the next one on pitchers.

This really comes down to Dale Murphy and Jeff Kent, though we'll throw Wally Joyner in there because he was pretty good, as well.  We'll start with a couple WAR chart comparisons from Fangraphs and then break 'em down individually.

Harmon Killebrew, Greatest Mormon Baseball Player, Dies

Harmon Killebrew died of esophageal cancer yesterday.  He is the greatest Mormon baseball player to ever live.  Let's explore.

They called him Killer because his name was Killebrew but his personality was the exact opposite.  There are hundreds of stories out there about how kind and gentle and approachable Killer was.  But at the plate the man lived up to the name.  As the incomparable Joe Posnanski points out, he was inhumanly strong and hit home runs at a pace greater than Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Sammy Sosa.  He was born to rake.

In his career he hit 573 home runs, including eight 40 homer seasons (and one 39 homer season), which is good for 11th all time.  Though the list is now polluted with steroid users, at the time he retired he was in the top five or six fifth all time.  His career slash stats are .256/.376/.509, which means that while he wasn't a high average guy, he did the things which are actually important really well, i.e. get on base and hit with power.  In his MVP year of 1969 he had a 1.011 OPS, led the league in on-base percentage, hit 49 home runs, and led the league in intentional walks.  He was voted to the Hall of Fame in 1984 (it inexplicably took four tries to get voted into the Hall, which is more evidence that the BBWAA should not be solely in charge of that process).  He did all this in an era of depressed offense, which is reflected in his career OPS+ of 143, which is about the same as A-Rod, Vlad Guerrero, Willy McCovey, and Mike Schmidt.

There has always been a rumor that Killer was the model for the MLB logo, though it is not entirely clear.  You can read up about it here.  Killebrew always maintained that it was him, and the man that supposedly designed it maintained that was just a composite of a lot of different batters.  In any case, he is an iconic figure in baseball, the face of Minnesota Twins, and, in my opinion, one of the mythical "inner circle" Hall of Famers.

Dale Murphy was a pretty great centerfielder and has a good case for the Hall of Fame, Jacoby Ellsbury is a Red Sox which automatically makes him capital-G Great, Jeff Kent is one of the great offensive second basemen of all time, Bryce Harper is quickly gaining legend as perhaps the greatest prospect ever, and when all is said and done, Roy Halladay may end up taking the title of greatest Mormon baseball player of all time from Killebrew and leave Killer just as the greatest Mormon hitter of all time, but for now Harmon Killebrew stands alone, and baseball and Mormons have lost a great one.

He's Dead

This is a follow up to Andrew's great picture earlier.  I laugh every time.

Also, if you that initial thrill has worn off the bin Laden situation and you want to think a little more about it, here are a couple good things to read.

Osama Bin Laden is dead

I think this image sums up the last couple of years quite nicely:

http://i.imgur.com/KDssc.jpg

OBL's death may be largely symbolic, but the symbolism is powerful. The thugs that are Al-Qaeda have stolen the focus for too many years from the billions of peaceful Muslims in the world. If nothing else, I'm hoping his death will undo that supreme injustice.